Red

The days have been shaping up through the window.
The shadows of the bars twist everyday on the wall.
The pane turns frosty as soon as its midnight,
not caring if its winter, summer or the fall.

And she sits still and quiet by the curtain
The rose withered in her hand,
trying in vain to keep ahead of its time.
Her feet twitch when the sunlight hits her toes,
glinting a dark stained red that she had never painted on her nails.
She watches the birds hopping on the building far off
who come to visit her sometimes in the afternoon.
She never makes an effort to reach out to them
however shrill their calls start to get.
All she knows is a pain unknown to us.
A pain we never imagined her to know.
But who knew she was chosen to walk that path?We've called out to her a hundred many times
but she's never turned her head to us.
All we see is a drop of water or two,
sometimes around her feet or on her red stained palms.
The wall she's leaned on through the years
has turned red in patches beneath her hair.
The flowers have stirred their heads to face her
asking a thousand many times to forgive
and join their sisterhood.
A tiny nod I had noticed from her one day and all at once
it seemed the flowers drooped their heads and leaves.

She'd alone faced her lover
never knowing of the wrath he hid.
She'd screamed in vain all day and all night long
Praying that someone would hear her bleed.
We had taught her forgiveness when she was young,
but there was no way now
that we would even ask her to listen to us
or remember what we had taught her.
We were far apart I understood
but a fluttering breeze seemed unfamiliar always,
sometimes parting the fringes she kept covered her face with.
But she had promised never to show her face again,
and kept her head bowed on her knee
as she crouched up tighter, cold and closer
yet more distant with the passing trees.